Huawei briefed hundreds of technical experts from China's biggest state-owned and private companies about Harmony, including the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), China Telecom, Meituan, and Baidu in Beijing.

It seems that while most observers were looking the other way, Huawei has been quietly building an independent Chinese operating system that isn't subject to US sanctions. In the four years after the telecom giant was banned from using Google apps, the Shenzhen-based company has been making significant strides toward achieving its long-term goal: To dethrone Android and make its HarmonyOS the default operating system in China.

HarmonyOS has the third-largest share with 10 per cent in the second quarter of 2023, thanks to a strong resurgence in sales of Huawei smartphones. Although it's still well below Android's dominant 72 per cent, it is already starting to worry Apple which is the number two with 17 per cent.

Huawei already says more than 700 million devices (including phones, smart devices, computers, and others) were equipped with HarmonyOS as of August this year, with over 2.2 million developers actively building within the ecosystem.

Next year will be an important moment for the OS when HarmonyOS will no longer be compatible with Android apps and become part of a walled garden. The use of Harmony could be encouraged by the Chinese government on “security grounds.”